The United States military has never been comfortable with irregular and unconventional warfare. Its defining moment was the conventional clash of arms in the Second World War, and during the Cold War, nuclear deterrence aside, it prepared itself for conventional war with the Soviets in Europe. Military planners envisaged a great clash of armor and tactical air in the Fulda Gap where Soviet forces were expected to attack into the North German Plain. In this optic, Vietnam was a distraction and an aberration. Yet Vietnam proved a traumatic experience for the U.S. military, particularly the army, and its shadow continues to hang over America's military as it enters the twenty-first century. The great lesson of Vietnam for the U.S. military was a refusal to ever again fight a limited war against irregular forces. After the Vietnam War the U.S. military increasingly came to develop a new way of war — what I call standoff precision strike warfare — which exploits high technology to produce rapid, decisive victory in conventional combat. The Gulf War was the most obvious example of this new way of war.

Yet irregular forces and unconventional war will not go away. In the post—Cold War period, the U.S. military has been faced with increased demands for dealing with irregular warfare in the Balkans, Somalia, Haiti, and elsewhere. It has responded by trying to avoid another “quagmire.” There has been intense internal debate about how the U.S. military should respond to the demands of “peace operations.”